New York 1927

By Alexander Alekhine

Alekhine’s Controversial Masterpiece Finally in English! For decades, Alexander Alekhine’s account of New York 1927 was at the top of the list of works that should have been rendered into English but unaccountably were not. This is unlike any other tournament book ever written. Not only do you have one of the greatest annotators of all time rendering some brilliant analysis, but he melds it with an exceptional agenda, an anti-Capablanca agenda. And since he wrote it after defeating Capablanca in their marathon match, he sounds like a sore loser who became a sore winner. So, this is just a mean-spirited book, right? Nothing of the sort. Alekhine goes beyond elaborate move analysis and offers deep positional insights and psychological observations. Nikolai Grigoriev, in his foreword to the 1930 Russian edition of this book, pointed out how Alekhine broke new ground by underlining the critical moments of each game. Why Alekhine’s work was published in German, in Berlin in 1928, and not in English, is unclear. But now, after more than 80 years, it’s finally available to the largest audience of chessplayers. It’s about time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Russell Enterprises, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781936490066

Alexander Alekhine

Alexander Alekhine was World Champion from 1927 to 1935 and againf rom 1937 to his death in March  1946. His life was as turbulent as his chess; his long-standing feud with his great rival Capablanca is legendary, as is his vilification, and posthumous elevation to hero status in the then Soviet Russia. 

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New York

1927

Alexander Alekhine

Foreword by

Andy Soltis

2011

Russell Enterprises, Inc.

Milford, CT USA

New York 1927

by Alexander Alekhine

Copyright © 2011

Russell Enterprises, Inc.

All rights reserved under

Pan American and International Copyright Conventions.

No part of this book may be used, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any manner or form whatsoever or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

ISBN: 978-1-888690-83-5

Translated from the German by Mary Lawrence

Edited by Al Lawrence, OutExcel Corp.

Cover design by Janel Lowrance

Russell Enterprises, Inc.

PO Box 3131

Milford, CT 06460 USA

[e-mail]

http://www.russell-enterprises.com

Table of Contents

Foreword

Editor’s Note

Crosstable

The 1927 New York Tournament as Prologue to the World Championship in Buenos Aires

Cycle I

First Round

Second Round

Third Round

Fourth Round

Fifth Round

Cycle II

Sixth Round

Seventh Round

Eighth Round

Ninth Round

Tenth Round

Cycle III

Eleventh Round

Twelth Round

Thirteenth Round

Fourteenth Round

Fifteenth Round

Cycle IV

Sixteenth Round

Seventeenth Round

Eighteenth Round

Nineteenth Round

Twentieth Round

Index of Players

Index of Openings

Foreword

It’s about time this book was published. For decades, Alexander Alekhine’s account of New York 1927 was at the top of the list of works that should have been rendered into English but unaccountably were not.

There is no shortage of reasons for why this book was recognized as a classic when it first appeared. First, the tournament was one of the strongest ever held. The only previous events that came close to it in average strength were St. Petersburg 1895-96 and the finals of St. Petersburg 1914. The New York organizers further ensured their place in history by luring José Capablanca back into action. He had appeared in only four tournaments since becoming world champion in 1921.

The tournament also captured a pivotal moment in the evolution of chess thinking. New ideas normally gain acceptance slowly, almost glacially. But the games played at the Manhattan Square Hotel in the final days of the winter of 1927 showed how chess thinking had been transformed by the Hypermodern revolution. Even lapsed gambiteers like Frank Marshall and Rudolf Spielmann were experimenting with Indian openings at New York 1927. New theory was being written as early as games 1 and 2, which gave us the Manhattan Variation of the Queen’s Gambit Declined. Put that into perspective: Can you recall a modern tournament that provided the name for an opening?

And yet... And yet the 1927 tournament and its magnificent book have garnered only a fraction of the attention that New York 1924 achieved. Why?

There are several explanations and none tells the whole story. One version is that the 1927 tournament never became what the contemporary fans hoped it would be: It was not a candidates tournament. It was not a battle royale among all the potential challengers to determine who would be Capablanca’s next match opponent. There was no need for such an event because Capa’s five-year-old London Rules had stipulated how challengers should be chosen, and it wasn’t by a tournament. Alekhine had already challenged Capablanca according to those rules and he threatened to boycott the tournament if it would deprive him of his place at the head of the line of challengers.

Another explanation for why New York 1927 never reached the iconic status of 1924 is that there seemed to be something missing in the scoretable. Or rather, someone. It’s always hard to identify the precise international pecking order of bygone, pre-Elo days in this case, the days of February 19-March 25, 1927. However, it’s safe to say that several world-class players were absent, beginning with Akiba Rubinstein, Yefim Bogoljubow and Emanuel Lasker.

Bogo and Lasker were invited but failed to accept. Why that happened is significant because according to an alternative ratings universe, Chessmetrics, they and not Capa or Alekhine were the two strongest players in the world at the time. Bogoljubow had an amazing year in 1925, capped off by his stunning victory at the first international tournament of the Soviet Union, at Moscow. But success had clearly gone to his head by 1927. Bogoljubow replied to his invitation by asking for an enormous appearance fee of $1,500, which is well over $20,000 in today’s dollars. If his attitude wasn’t clear enough, he added that instead of this mediocre tournament – his word – the New Yorkers should spend their time, money and energy on a Bogoljubow-Capablanca world championship match.

Lasker, who was used to making his own huge fee demands, had a different reason for saying Nein to New York. He was still angry at Norbert Lederer, the organizer of both New York tournaments, because of an incident during his game with Capablanca in 1924. Lasker blamed his loss on a faulty clock and was upset that his protest wasn’t treated properly. The former world champion did not reply to his invitation to New York 1927 and his place was taken by Spielmann.

In addition to the missing-in-action masters and the lack of candidate tournament status, there are other explanations of why New York 1927 doesn’t match the caché of the 1924 tournament. One is the matter of age. The 1920s seemed to cherish everything that was new and young, at the expense of anything that predated the Great War that everyone wanted to forget.

New York 1924 may not have been a tournament filled with Magnus Carlsen-like kids but at least it had Richard Réti and his 1.Nf3 idea. That was fresh enough. In contrast, the 1927 invitees seemed old. All of them had won their spurs at least a dozen years before. The youngest, Alekhine, was 34. The players’ average was just under 41 years. By comparison, Garry Kasparov was an ex-champion at 37 and retired at 41. It’s easy, therefore, to write off this off as a tournament of has-beens.

But that would be quite wrong. Capablanca was never stronger than he was at New York. Alekhine reached his peak three years later. Aron Nimzovich and Spielmann would have their best-ever results when they finished 1st-2nd at Carlsbad 1929. Even Marshall seemed to be getting stronger in the years before 1927. His historical rating was on the rise since his poor showing in the U.S. Championship match of 1923 against Edward Lasker. Yes, the New York invitees were ancient by today’s standard. But in those days, super-GMs hit their apex later in life then than they do now.

Another stab at explaining why New York 1927 has been dimly remembered is the games. Alekhine included only two of the 20 he played (games 32 and 53) in his second best-games collection. This was significant because in those pre-Informant days, it was the GMs who established priorities and told the fans which games were important. In contrast, Alekhine put five of his 20 games from Baden-Baden 1925 and three of his 16 games from Kecskemet 1927 in that book. Marshall could only include one of his 27 games in My 50 Years of Chess because he only won one.

But this explanation, too, has flaws. Great chess was played in New York, a lot of it. Milan Vidmar’s wonderful win over Nimzovich (game 29) and Nimzo’s crush of Vidmar (game 14) and of Marshall (game 51) are among the finest games they ever played. Nimzovich felt that nine of his New York games deserved to be included with 100 others in his brilliant The Praxis of My System. And, of course, there were the games of the tournament winner. Capablanca never compiled his best games. But in the Harry Golombek’s book of Capa’s 100 best, you’ll find wins over Nimzovich (games 4 and 43), Alekhine (game 13), Vidmar (game 34) and Spielmann (game 37). All of these games deserve the ovations they received at the time.

Perhaps the most compelling reason for why New York 27 is largely forgotten is its lack of drama: The heavy favorite won easily. Only one of the invitees, the hapless Marshall, had ever beaten Capablanca before, and Capa was in no danger of losing to his old rival this time. In fact, the world champion wasn’t in real jeopardy in any of his 20 games. The densely annotated collection of Capablanca games by Alexander Khalifman and Leonid Yudasin indicates he had inferior positions only three times in the tournament. Although Alekhine claims he could have put Capa in a difficult position in game 13, Khalifman/Yudasin deny that. They say Capa was at risk only in game 40. He held the sole lead after three rounds and never looked back. He was so far ahead in the final rounds that he telegraphed his intentions to the other players that he wouldn’t try to beat them.

So, the tournament script may fail to stir a modern reader. But Alekhine’s words should. This is unlike any other tournament book ever written.

Not only do you have one of the greatest annotators of all time rendering some brilliant analysis, but he melds it with an exceptional agenda, an anti-Capablanca agenda. The extraordinary bias is a rarity for tournament books, which were often written in cool, dispassionate and boring prose. One of the few exceptions was the book of Nuremberg 1896, in which Siegbert Tarrasch ridiculed the victory of his rival, world champion Emanuel Lasker. At the end of that book, Tarrasch compiled a luck scoretable, that claimed that Lasker scored five luck acquired points from bad positions, and this was more than enough to turn what should have been a poor performance into an outstanding result.

Tarrasch was being a sore loser in that appendix. But Alekhine’s bitterness runs throughout the 1927 book. And since he wrote it after defeating Capablanca in their marathon match, he sounds like a sore loser who became a sore winner.

Alekhine’s theme is evident in the introduction where he derides Capa’s third place at Moscow (the biggest disappointment he had experienced up until then in his international career). Moscow helped reveal the truth about "the half-mythic Capablanca Uberspieler." New York revealed more of Capablanca’s weaknesses, Alekhine adds, and that showed him how to beat the world champion in the match in Buenos Aires six months later.

Alekhine’s hostility is still raging near the very end of the book when this position arises.

Capablanca-Nimzovich White to play

He criticizes Capa’s choice of 21.Kf2?, instead of the obvious 21.Rd6!. Like Bobby Fischer, Alekhine didn’t think much of what was considered Capablanca’s strong suit. In the endgame, he sniffs, he is not to be feared by a first-class master.

But Alekhine must have known that 21.Kf2 was not just weak but deliberately weak. Capablanca felt that if he had won this game or added other victory-lap points, it would have unfairly altered the race for second place. According to Hans Kmoch, in a 1962 Chess Review article, Capa even wrote a note that read Please make better moves. I don’t know how to avoid a win and passed it, through a tournament official, to Nimzovich, during the endgame.

Alekhine also took aim at Nimzovich, who, after Alekhine had won the world championship, seemed like the most likely challenger for his new title. It’s worth noting that a 1932 poll of readers of Wiener Schachzeitung found that they considered the world’s best players were Alekhine, Capablanca, and Nimozvich, followed by Bogoljubow and Spielmann, in that order.

Alekhine repeatedly trashed his rivals’ play in the New York tournament book. Nimzovich’s choice of 16.g4?? in game 43 is unworthy of even a mediocre amateur, he writes. The fact is that Nimzovich, in a contest with an equal opponent is probably always doomed to fall from the highest level into the abyss, and then work his way back upward, he says.

It becomes clear later in the introduction that Alekhine felt that the tournament should have been a two-man race between him and Capablanca because there was no one else worthy to compete. Once Alekhine lost his first game with the champion, he sought a draw in their subsequent games, he said, and the tournament drama disappeared.

Nevertheless Alekhine castigates his colleagues, over and over, for their pitiful play against Capablanca. It’s really unbelievable how self-consciously and weakly Marshall always plays against Capablanca! he writes in transparent frustration. Vidmar played somewhat under his usual league against the champion, and Spielmann was cowed by Capa’s reputation, he said.

So, this is just a mean-spirited book, right? Nothing of the sort.

In contrast with his New York 1924 book, here Alekhine goes beyond elaborate move analysis and offers deep positional insights and psychological observations. Nikolai Grigoriev, in his foreword to the 1930 Russian edition of this book, pointed out how Alekhine broke new ground by underlining the critical moments of each game. We see this in Alekhine’s comments to 56.Re4 in game 11, to 14...Ned4 in game 15, to 24...Qc3 in game 17, to 32...Rd4 in game 24, to 19.N×f7 in game 27, to 22.c4 in game 39, for just a few examples.

Alekhine also offers some valuable positional pointers. For instance, he shows the virtues of not contesting control of an open file in game 14 and the bankruptcy of an outpost-centric strategy in game 27. After Nimzovich castles in game 3, with few of his pieces in the vicinity, Alekhine writes that a king’s capacity for self-defense has been strongly underestimated for a considerable time (after the desperate attempt by the aging Steinitz to use this piece to attack on a full board was a miserable fiasco). His explanation of how to win the K+Q vs. K+R+N ending in game 32 and his analysis of the rook endings of games 5, 56 and 60 are among the most insightful sections of a very instructive book.

Alekhine also tosses out some remarkable and original opening ideas. For example, after 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 e6 3.g3 in game 41, he suggests 3...b5! more than 40 years before the world appreciated its strength. He also suggests 6.Qe2 in the Vienna Game, after 1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.f4 d5 4.f×e5 N×e4 5.Nf3 Bc5 in game 15, with the idea of 6...Bf5 7.Nd1! and 8.d3. Less promising but still intriguing is game 35, where, after 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 he suggests 4.Bd3 c5 5.e×d5 Q×d5 6.Kf1!?.

Alekhine also entertains us with his use of language. Or rather languages. He was a polyglot who, at a later tournament, Kemeri 1937, could speak English with Reuben Fine, German with Kmoch, and French with everyone at the opening ceremony. In this book you’ll find him coining terms such as "angst-moves and positional hari-kiri." In game 24 he pokes fun at Marshall’s mishandling of the pawn structure by adding that he couldn’t bring himself to try to correct it with a "pater peccavi-move. He suggests there was a mot d’ordre to play only second- or third-best moves against" Capablanca.

Ironically, it was Capablanca who was supposed to write this book. He reached an agreement to edit it before play began. But on the eve of the Buenos Aires match, the American Chess Bulletin said that he was unable to write the notes and therefore the tournament committee had ceded the rights for the English edition to Dr. Alekhine. Alekhine’s notes to his own games were turning up in leading journals in Germany, Russia, Austria and Switzerland, among others, and a Russian tournament book, by Savielly Tartakower, soon appeared. Why Alekhine’s work was published in German, in Berlin in 1928, and not in English, is unclear. But now, after more than 80 years, it’s finally available to the largest audience of chessplayers. As I said, it’s about time.

Andy Soltis

New York City

December 2010

Editor’s Note

When the publisher came to us with the tournament book of New York 1927, published in German, we saw a chance to correct a historical injustice. It just could not stand that the book of one of the most important chess events ever held in the U.S., written by the fourth world champion, Alexander Alekhine, was not available in English. (A 78-page pamphlet by Chess Digest [Alekhine, Alexander: International Chess Tournament New York 1927, Dallas, Chess Digest 1972] made no attempt at an extensive translation.)

The project seemed ideal for our husband-and-wife team. Mary, a former German teacher and Fulbright scholar at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, worked on the translation of the text, while Al, a chess editor and writer, helped sort out the colorful and intricate chess annotations Dr. Alekhine is famous for. We worked hard to maintain faithfully Alekhine’s original thoughts, as well as his presentation of material. Along the way, we discovered the inevitable mistakes in the commonly used databases of these games, as well as challenging typos in the German source itself.

But more than anything, we found Alekhine’s brilliance, humor, and deep insight. We hope you agree that the outcome is both an important piece of history and a series of chess lessons on the highest level.

In 1927 Alekhine obviously lacked the benefit of computers. And although Al ran Deep Rybka 4 as he played through the games and variations, we made no changes to Alekhine’s annotations and inserted no notes. What readers get is what Alekhine wrote. Many readers will, however, enjoy running such an engine and will find